Gulliver’s Travels:

Anticlimax of remakes

Demi Hewamanna

Gulliver’s Travels – directed by Rob Letterman starring Jack Black, Amanda Peet, Jason Segel and Emily Blunt – did not live up to the hopes of what was expected. It was like another great movie just redone and spoilt for the sake of making a film when you have no original ideas of you own.

As any other remake, Gulliver’s also begins in the present era with the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle and ending up in a fairytale land that is unknown to the real world.

The story revolves around Lemuel Gulliver (Black), mail delivery guy at one of New York’s leading newspapers.

A guy he was interviewing becomes his boss the next day and things just turn upside down. That very day he tries to give writing a chance to impress his long time crush Darcy (Peet) and after a cut and paste job from the internet, Darcy becomes very impressed with his work and gives him his first travel writing expedition to the Bermuda Islands.

With his i-Phone and plenty of coca cola, he sets off on his journey and faces a huge storm and cyclone that whirls him to another world. This is where his real adventure begins.

He is captured by General Edwards and taken prisoner to be shown to the King Theordore – King of Liliput.

In his cell he meets another prisoner, Horatio (Segel) and become very good friends. Horatio was imprisoned because he was trying to court the King’s daughter and also Edward’s to be Princess Mary.

When the king’s enemy attack and try to kidnap the princess, Gulliver breaks free and rescues the Princess and King and is declared a hero of Liliput! Once again we see some typical ‘hollywood’ cheap joke when Gulliver removes his pants and douses the fire with his ‘nature’s call’.

Gulliver lies in every possible manner to get recognition and claims to be President of the United States in his world. As the people of Liliput are great builders, he gets them to build his house, theatre and everything beginning with his name. Things start to develop from there on – revenge, love and guilt.

However it was all dry humour and even the audience were not laughing. Jack Black is losing his touch in the comedy world and I think the only character I enjoyed him very much in was Kung Fu Panda.

Watching Gulliver’s Travels was like witnessing a film director trying anything to desperately make a name for himself, with the help of a few well known actors who would have really done better in their roles if the story had some spice and excitement from the usual Hollywood Remakes.

If you are bored and you got nothing to do and sick of watching reruns, then this movie would do the trick to lift that boredom.

But in case you still do, catch it at Majestic Cinema before the February 4.